Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Those poor Creationists

Early humans may have roamed Europe as much as 1.2 million years ago, far earlier than previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday, based on fossils they found in northern Spain.

Researchers excavated a jaw bone, teeth and simple tools in a cave near the city of Burgos dated around 400,000 years older than the previously oldest-known remains found at a nearby site 14 years ago, a paper published in the journal Nature said.

The remains are accurately dated and lay to rest doubts about when early humans first lived in Europe, said Andreu Olle, who has worked at the Atapuerca site since 1990.

"These are the oldest human remains in Europe. With this fossil, we can say it (Europe) was populated earlier than was thought," he told Reuters.

The bones are similar to fossils thought to be 800,000 years old found at the same site in 1994, suggesting a continuous human presence in Western Europe.